Two
whistleblowers stood side by side before a courthouse in Washington,
D.C. on Monday. Veteran
of the Pentagon Papers scandal, Daniel
Ellsberg was backing a protest by former FBI translator Sibel
Edmonds, against a court gag order which has silenced her revelations
about the September 11th, 2001 attacks.

The whistleblower pair
were protesting yet another delay by Judge Reggie Walton of the District
Court of Columbia in determining whether Edmonds' closed session testimony
to Congressional inquiries can be declared state secrets by U.S. Attorney
General, John Ashcroft.

In a statement, Edmonds
called Ashcroft's legal moves anti-freedom of speech and anti-due
process.

Ellsberg's common cause
with Edmonds is founded on his own battle to make public a top secret
study of US decision-making in Vietnam, known as the Pentagon Papers.

In an exclusive interview
with BreakForNews.com he said that Ashcroft's legal actions against
Edmonds were: "clearly intended to keep her from bringing out
in public information that could lead.... to criminal indictments
and possible convictions of major political figures."

Ellsberg says that if
Edmonds' allegations are confirmed, the current Attorney General could
be judged obstructive and share the fate of A.G. John Mitchell --who
in Ellsberg v. Mitchell famously tried to squelch Ellsberg's
1971 revelations, and served prison time over the affair.

"John Ashcroft may
well sleep eventually in the same cell as John Mitchell," Ellsberg
said.

In a recent interview
with BreakFornews.com, Sibel Edmonds alleged that the US State Department
had blocked investigations showing links between criminal drug trafficking
networks and the terror attacks on 9/11.

"Certain investigations
were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because
it would have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain
business relations with foreign organizations," she said. (Interview
- 4:00 min.)

Enlarge

Edmonds also indicated
that the FBI's intelligence translation service had been penetrated
by a criminal, semi-legitimate intelligence group --not linked to
any government. Her measured words hinted at politically explosive
connections between non-terrorist criminal networks and the 9/11 attacks.

Since October, 2002 Edmonds
has been bound by provisional gag orders while awaiting an opportunity
for a full hearing and a definitive ruling. The recent moves in the
case arose from a government bid to exclude her testimony from a class
action lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims.

Judge Walton had scheduled
Monday as the first ever hearing at which Edmonds was to be allowed
counter the state secret privilege assertion by Ashcroft. But after
an in camera presentation last week by the government side,
he called off the hearing. Unofficial reports say a new date may be
set for early July.

Talk
of US government interference in 9/11 investigations, and the considerable
volume of online analysis discounting the official conspiracy theory,
resonate with Ellsberg.

"I'm
not an expert on all this," he admits. "But I am increasingly
open to the explanation that people in the administration did see
this coming... and may have indeed reduced some obstacles.., or opened
the door, in effect. I haven't been absolutely convinced on that,
but it does seem to me to be an open question that deserves investigation."

"Now beyond that...
it seems to me quite plausible that --plausible, that's all I'd say--
that Pakistan was quite involved in this, and that many Saudis were
well informed on this," says Ellsberg.

"And to say that.
To say Pakistan-- is to me, to say C.I.A. Because I think the relations
between the Pakistan I.S.I. [intelligence service] and CIA were very
close from the beginning. And it's hard to say that the I.S.I knew
something that the CIA had no knowledge of."

"So if you say,
do I accept confidently, and do I rely on the official interpretation?
Certainly not. But, I wouldn't say that I have been yet been thoroughly
convinced by any alternative."

"I can add one thing
though -from my own experience, that's relevant."

"Is it possible...
that an American president could have... welcomed an attack on America
that he would interpret [as] justifying an invasion of another country?"

"Well, that's more
than possible, that happened --under a president that I served. Lyndon
Johnson did put American destroyers in harms way, deliberately provoking
an attack.. in the Tonkin Gulf. Not only in August of '64, but in
February of '65. ...There was an attack on August 2nd, and that was
not unwelcome to the United States at that point."

Enlarge

Sibel Edmonds has
already become somewhat of a flag-bearer for the diverse 9/11 truth
movement, which ranges across advocacy groups, families of victims,
individual investigators and a host of online web sites --all disputing
the official 'Al-Qaida conspiracy' theory.

But an article
today by Scott Loughrey on the Baltimore Chronicle online, alleges
that Edmonds is offering a limited hangout version of events, and
accuses her of "repeating the propaganda of the state."

Loughrey writes that
Edmonds blames intelligence failures, rather than more sinister explanations,
for the failure to prevent the attacks.

That's misleading and
unfair. Yes, the superficial reports of her claims in the mainstream
media focus mainly on intelligence failures. Yes, Edmonds was coy
in her early public statements --out of defenence to the sensitivity
of her information and the gung-ho public sentiment at the time, no
doubt.

But in closed session
testimony to Congressional inquiries, Edmonds has given a much fuller
account of her concerns. So dangerous an account that Ashcroft seeks
to retrospectively cloak that testimony with state secret privilege

And as a disillusioned
Edmonds has seen her evidence disappear unremarked into the black
hole of those inquiries, she has blown the whistle publicly --as unreservedly
as the gag order allows:

She says the pre-9/11
US intelligence system had been penetrated by a drug-linked, semi-legitimate
criminal intelligence network, operating with seeming impunity inside
the FBI.

The post-9/11 intelligence
'failures' included the willful quashing by the government, of investigations
tracing those criminal networks.

The 9/11 terror plot
itself, intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network
of international scope, in ways that form a "crystal clear"
picture of what was going on --to quote Edmonds.

If that's a limited hangout,
God help us. The truth must be awful.

If it's true, as Edmonds
asserts, the official line is a shallow sham.